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Clay lies still, but blood's a rover Breath's aware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey's over then there'll be time enough to sleep.
A. E. Housman
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A. E. Housman
Age: 77 †
Born: 1859
Born: January 1
Died: 1936
Died: January 1
Classical Philologist
Classical Scholar
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
Worcs
A. E. Housman
Stills
Aware
Still
Travel
Enough
Lies
Time
Journey
Rover
Blood
Lad
Sleep
Clay
Lying
Breath
Keep
Breaths
More quotes by A. E. Housman
I could no more define poetry than a terrier can define a rat.
A. E. Housman
The average man, if he meddles with criticism at all, is a conservative critic.
A. E. Housman
And silence sounds no worse than cheers After earth has stopped the ears.
A. E. Housman
We now to peace and darkness And earth and thee restore Thy creature that thou madest And wilt cast forth no more.
A. E. Housman
I am not a pessimist but a pejorist (as George Eliot said she was not an optimist but a meliorist) and that philosophy is founded on my observation of the world, not on anything so trivial and irrelevant as personal history.
A. E. Housman
Give me a land of boughs in leaf A land of trees that stand Where trees are fallen there is grief I love no leafless land.
A. E. Housman
Mithridates, he died old. Housman's passage is based on the belief of the ancients that Mithridates the Great [c. 135-63 B.C.] had so saturated his body with poisons that none could injure him. When captured by the Romans he tried in vain to poison himself, then ordered a Gallic mercenary to kill him.
A. E. Housman
They put arsenic in his meat And stared aghast to watch him eat They poured strychnine in his cup And shook to see him drink it up.
A. E. Housman
Do not ever read books about versification: no poet ever learnt it that way. If you are going to be a poet, it will come to you naturally and you will pick up all you need from reading poetry.
A. E. Housman
Stars, I have seen them fall, But when they drop and die No star is lost at all From all the star-sown sky. The toil of all that be Helps not the primal fault It rains into the sea And still the sea is salt.
A. E. Housman
He would not stay for me, and who can wonder? He would not stay for me to stand and gaze. I shook his hand, and tore my heart in sunder, And went with half my life about my ways.
A. E. Housman
The mortal sickness of a mind too unhappy to be kind.
A. E. Housman
Could man be drunk for ever With liquor, love, or fights, Lief should I rouse at morning And lief lie down of nights. But men at whiles are sober And think by fits and starts, And if they think, they fasten Their hands upon their hearts.
A. E. Housman
Housman is one of my heroes and always has been. He was a detestable and miserable man. Arrogant, unspeakably lonely, cruel, and so on, but and absolutely marvellous minor poet, I think, and a great scholar.
A. E. Housman
You smile upon your friend to-day, To-day his ills are over You hearken to the lover's say, And happy is the lover. 'Tis late to hearken, late to smile, But better late than never: I shall have lived a little while Before I die for ever.
A. E. Housman
Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose but young men think it is, and we were young.
A. E. Housman
All knots that lovers tie Are tied to sever. Here shall your sweetheart lie, Untrue for ever.
A. E. Housman
Tomorrow, more's the pity, Away we both must hie, To air the ditty and to earth I.
A. E. Housman
These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled, Followed their mercenary calling And took their wages and are dead. The British regulars who made the retreat from Mons, beginning August 24, 1914.
A. E. Housman
I sought them far and found them, The sure, the straight, the brave, The hearts I lost my own to, The souls I could not save They braced their belts about them, They crossed in ships the sea, They sought and found six feet of ground, And there they died for me.
A. E. Housman